Policies

As a responsible business, we acknowledge the importance of reducing our carbon footprint to mitigate the impact of climate change. Download the policy here.

We recognise that anyone can experience domestic abuse regardless of their sex, gender, race, ethnic or religious group, sexuality, class, or disability, however Next Chapter focus’ on supporting women and children.

Domestic abuse is perpetuated in many different ways and many women say that race and religion compound their experiences as female survivors of DA, with the fear of racism silencing them.

Due to multiple levels of discrimination, women from black and minority ethnic communities, refugees and asylum seekers and those experiencing Honour Based Violence, Forced Marriage or Female Genital Mutilation, experience greater isolation and additional barriers to accessing help and support.

We strive to ensure that women of all, any or no faiths or religions or any ethnic background have equality of access to support from our services, and that they are treated with culturally appropriate respect.

Next Chapter welcomes all feedback about our services, it helps us to keep improving and fix anything that isn't working.

We welcome feedback from women and children who use our services and from other organisations with whom we work.

Compliments are a way of telling us that people like what we do, they help to motivate our staff and tell us that what we are doing is helpful.

Comments are useful in giving us feedback about things that we should continue doing, stop doing or change. We welcome constructive suggestions.

Complaints tell us if people are not happy with a service or the way we are doing things. Complaints are equally important to us, we need to know when people are unhappy with our service and we will try to put things right if they go wrong.

We will not treat anybody less favourably for making a complaint.

We will make it easy for people to make their views known to us and respond to them in a timely way.

External Regulators

If you feel that we have broken the law or there is a serious risk of harm to the people we support, you can contact:

• Women’s Aid who provide us with a robust, independent framework of good practice. You can contact them with your concerns by emailing info@womensaid.org.uk
• The Charity Commission Complain about a charity - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
• The Fundraising Regulator Make a complaint | Fundraising Regulator if you are unhappy with our fundraising activities
• The Information Commissioner’s Office if you are unhappy with how we use or look after your information Make a complaint | ICO

‍Visit our Compliments, Comments and Complaints form

This policy sets out the roles and responsibilities of Next Chapter in working together with other professionals and agencies in promoting adults welfare and safeguarding them from abuse and neglect.

This policy is intended to support staff working within Next Chapter.  It does not replace, but is supplementary to the Southend, Essex, Thurrock (SET) Safeguarding Adults Guidelines (2015) available at www.essexsab.org.

Policies linked with this will include: whistle blowing, complaints, information sharing, safeguarding children, disciplinary and equality and diversity.

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Principles

We adhere to the following principles:

• Safeguarding is everyone's responsibility: for services to be effective each individual and organisation should play their full part.
• The welfare of the child is paramount.
• A child centred approach: for services to be effective they should be based on a clear understanding of the needs and views of children.

 Aims of the policy & procedure

• To Safeguard and promote the welfare of children
• To enable staff and volunteers to have a clear understanding of what to do if they have concerns about a child or young person
• To explain how allegations against staff and volunteers will be dealt with

This statement aims to set out our position on Women-only spaces.

Read the policy here